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Medicine & Health

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 23-Jun-2026 22:15 ET (24-Jun-2026 02:15 GMT/UTC)

An endangered natural pharmacy hidden in coral reefs

ETH Zurich
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Reef-building stony and fire corals support a rich microbiome consisting largely of unknown species. By leveraging genetic material, ETH researchers have now managed to characterise some of these microorganisms. The microorganisms can produce natural products which could be used for medical therapies and chemical reactions. Reefs may also be home to thousands of other useful microbes which, alongside their coral hosts, are threatened with extinction.

Journal: Nature

A risk factor for liver disease: your parent’s body weight

WashU Medicine
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Researchers at WashU Medicine have found a strong correlation between a person’s risk of developing liver disease and obesity in the father or mother during the pregnancy. The findings indicate that the risk for this disease begins much earlier than previously understood.

Journal: Gut
Funder: Wellcome Trust and UK Medical Research Council, Wellcome Trust and UK Medical Research Council, Wellcome Trust and UK Medical Research Council

UT Arlington appoints Lal to lead precision health, informatics

University of Texas at Arlington
Business Announcement

Dennis Lal, an internationally recognized genomic scientist and health informatics leader, has been appointed as a professor with The University of Texas at Arlington and the new executive director of the Center for Innovation in Health Informatics (CIHI), where he will lead health care-scale informatics, precision health, and clinical AI initiatives.

Gallbladder cancer could soon be detected in blood, study finds

University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Researchers at Tezpur University in Assam, India, working with scientists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, have identified distinct chemical signatures in blood that could help detect gallbladder cancer earlier. This is important in cancer patients with and without gallstones, two groups that often require different diagnostic approaches.

Journal: Journal of Proteome Research

As health care goes digital, patients are being left behind

University of California - San Francisco
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Patients are now expected to navigate much of their care online — from seeing their doctor on a screen to booking appointments, refilling prescriptions, and checking test results through health care portals. 

Journal: JMIR Formative Research
Funder: UCSF Population Health and Health Equity Funding, California Health Care Foundation

Next-generation CAR-T designs that could transform cancer treatment

Impact Journals LLC
Peer-Reviewed Publication

BUFFALO, NY – February 25, 2026 – A new editorial perspective was published in Volume 17 of Oncotarget on February 20, 2026, titled “CAR-T therapy: Trailblazing CAR(ing) in cancer treatment.”

Journal: Oncotarget

Discovery linking gut bacteria to cancer treatment wins the Bial Award in Biomedicine and earns €350,000 prize

BIAL Foundation
Grant and Award Announcement

An international consortium of 48 researchers from institutions in France, Sweden, and the United States has won the 2025 edition of the Bial Award in Biomedicine, a €350,000 prize promoted by the Bial Foundation to recognise a published work of exceptional quality and scientific relevance in the field of biomedicine.

Funder: Fundação Bial

Qiliang (Andy) Ding, PhD, named recipient of the 2026 ACMG Foundation Rising Scholar Trainee Award

American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics
Grant and Award Announcement

The ACMG Foundation for Genetic and Genomic Medicine (ACMGF), in partnership with Genetics in Medicine Open (GIM Open), is pleased to announce Qiliang (Andy) Ding, PhD, as the inaugural recipient of the 2026 Rising Scholar Trainee Award. This new annual award recognizes the most outstanding research publication by a trainee published in Genetics in Medicine Open during the preceding calendar year.

In vitro antibacterial activity of crude extracts from Tithonia diversifolia (asteraceae) and Solanum torvum (solanaceae) against selected shigella species

Xia & He Publishing Inc.
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Infectious diarrhea is a gastrointestinal illness that results in around 1.7 billion cases and 525,000 deaths annually, particularly among children under five, according to the World Health Organization. While some Cameroonian medicinal plants show promise for treating diarrhea, many plants are used without established scientific evidence of their efficacy. These plants include Tithonia diversifolia (T. diversifolia) and Solanum torvum (S. torvum), which are traditionally used to treat diarrheal symptoms. This study sought to investigate the anti-Shigella activity of leaf extracts from T. diversifolia and S. torvum.

Journal: Journal of Exploratory Research in Pharmacology